th3 m1ss1ng

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“If you’re looking for a reason then give me something to believe in”
reason, th3 m1ss1ng

James wrote so much material it’s hard to make any sense of it.

We have been slowly reading our way through dozens of notebooks, scraps of paper, ideas and comments written on the back of envelopes. All in no discernable order; no dates or page numbers – complete chaos. There has to be a key to all this. There has to be a way of getting it into some sort of chronological order, otherwise we will never find out what happened. We’ll never piece it all together as it is. Where’s the fucking key James?

Recently we held a “reunion” of sorts in Cardiff between existing members of the m1ss1ng project, all long time friends of James. We took some photos to mark the occasion.

We tried as many ways as possible to contact James to see if we could get him to meet us. Emails, letters to all of his known addresses, family members, past girlfriends. It was quite a campaign.

We asked him to meet us in the Vulcan pub in Cardiff, a place we used to frequent whenever we’d visit friends. Not surprisingly the night went by and James didn’t show.
It’s been 13 months. We are no closer.

th3 m1ss1ng

August 2009

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Released
“Will you come back? I’m not ready”
first, th3 m1ss1ng

On the 12 month anniversary of James’s disappearance, we have chosen to release a single. This is a self-produced, self-financed totally independent release as MP3 only. We think James would approve – it sits perfectly with his modern post-punk views. He loved music and hated industry.

“first” was written by th3 m1ss1ng and the lyrics are by James. The title doesn’t mean this was the first song he wrote, but it relates to the first time an imaginary kidnapper abducts a victim.

The lyrics are pretty literal. Sometimes the clarity and vision James had with this topic disturbed us. Call it obsessive genius, or fixated determination, but it’s obvious that some of his writing came from personal experience; we’re just not clear which elements of what he wrote were real, drawn from reality or imagined.

Details of where to download the track are on our home page.

th3 m1ss1ng

June 2009

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Progress
“Have you figured out where the key is?”
grey, th3 m1ss1ng

Things are unravelling, revealing themselves, pieces of a jigsaw, writing on a wall, spokes in a wheel, whatever.

We got into James’s flat and wished we hadn’t. On the surface there are no traces here of the person we know. There are no signatures, no signs, no trails, no clues. This could be anyone’s flat. It could be a red herring, some elaborate hoax. A trick. A joke. I’d laugh, but I’ve lost my sense of humour in all this. After all, James still hasn’t been in contact.

Then we found notebooks. Lots of notebooks. Some video tapes, some dat cassettes, cds and photos. The flat works as some sort of disguise, completely anonymous, but in his wardrobe, we found what we had been looking for, what James had led us to.

We haven’t made it to James’s flat. It doesn’t seem right just yet, and his family need some convincing. We still have the key, we just want their blessing I suppose.

We all met last night to talk through what to do. What we might find. What might happen. In the middle of our reminiscing we remembered the first time James went missing, back in 2005 when he was supposed to be back in England after his round the world trip. We’d had plenty of updates and emails whilst he was away – loads of photos and stories. We recognised how different a person he was back then. It’s hard to explain here but he was a completely different person after he got back. Something had clearly happened whilst he was missing but we never really found out what.

James had been back in England for 4 months before he made contact with us. This was early 2006. After he had returned no one mentioned the time he had lost contact with us, or asked what happened to him, or why all of a sudden he was a completely changed person. We all found out bits and pieces over the last few years in our different conversations with him, and we’re piecing them together now. They didn’t seem to connect before, random bits of information all locked in our own heads – but adding them together makes something. It forms a picture, but not a picture any of us want to see.

th3 m1ss1ng

April 2009

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We’ve known James for years. We met him in college back in the nineties where we’d all skip lessons and either hang out in the common room or whichever pub would let us in to share a coke and play pool. He was always the ULTRA cool one, the guy everyone wanted to be with because he just emanated art. The guy would cough and it was a fucking masterpiece. Most people just hung about with him in the hope that some of this would rub off on them, probably ourselves included. To begin with at least.

But we soon became friends and when we set up our band, James was an obvious choice for our drummer. He would also fill in some of our other obvious gaps – lyrics, song structure; he even came up with the band name The Missing (which we later changed to th3 m1ss1ng – again James’s suggestion). A few years later after we had split and “reformed” James even did some music videos.

James would often go missing. He’d just up and leave without a word. The longest time he did this was for over 6 months and it drove his parents insane - they even had him registered as a missing person. No word, no phone call or email. Nothing. He’d even left his wallet behind.

Now he’s gone missing again, but it’s weird this time. Normally we wouldn’t bat an eyelid, but this time it’s very different. First of all, he sent us a note. All the other times he wouldn’t even let us know where he was going or when he would be back.

Also, the letter doesn’t sound like the James we know, although that’s certainly his handwriting. It’s hard to explain, but if you knew him you’d realise that it wasn’t quite right. He says sorry for a start – that’s definitely not like him.

The reverse of James’s note is a letter from a missed mental health appointment. We had no idea James was seeing anyone or had any mental problems, although it would explain some of his erratic behaviour which we saw after he came back from travelling a few years back.

Something else which doesn’t fit is that the letter arrived with no post mark which suggests it was hand delivered.

And finally he’s asked us to find him. This is new. This is definitely new. At first we thought this was some sort of elaborate game, or an art project or something but it just doesn’t feel right. There is a feeling amongst us that he didn’t plan this, but he knew it was coming.

We are looking through the stuff in his flat over the next few weeks. We’re going to post what we find on this site because if this is a big joke then I want James to be able to see what we’re doing and ring us to say how much he likes it. Shit, I just want him to ring us.

th3 m1ss1ng

March 2009

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